If you’re interested in a great overview of the convergence of vertical search in the newly blended Universal Search, check out this article by my colleague, P.J. Fusco on “Personalized, Universal and Optimized“.

If you’re interested in more details on how to optimize for image search and how to optimize through image sharing sites such as Flickr, Fotki, and 23, be sure to catch the panel session I’ll be participating in at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose in August. I’ll be joined again by my colleagues, Shari Thurow, and Liana Evans along with perhaps a couple of engineers from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live.